Magic Happens Here

Do you remember the 1980s? Veteran users of free software on Unix
could testify that though there were a lot of programs distributed as
source code back then (over USENET), there was not a lot of
consistency in how to compile and install it. The more complicated a
package was, the more likely it was to have its own unique build
procedure that had to be learned first. And there were no widely
used approaches to portability problems. Each software author
handled them in a different way, if they did at all.

Fast forward to the present. A de facto standard is in widespread use
for solving those problems, and it's not just free software packages
that are using it; some proprietary programs from the largest computer
companies are built using this software. It even does Windows.

As it evolved in the 1990s it demonstrated the power of some good
ideas: sharing expertise, automating repetitive work, and having
consistency where it is helpful without sacrificing flexibility where
it is helpful.

What is "it"? The GNU Autotools, a group of utilities developed in the
1990s for the GNU Project. The authors of this book and I were some
of its principal developers, but it turned out to help solve many
other peoples' problems as well, and many other people contributed to
it. It is one of the many projects that developed by cooperation
while making what is now often called GNU/Linux. The community made
the GNU Autotools widespread, as people adopted it for their own programs
and extended it where they found that was needed. The creation of
Libtool is that type of contribution.

Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool were developed separately, to make
tackling the problem of software configuration more manageable by
partitioning it. But they were designed to be used as a system, and
they make more sense when you have documentation for the whole system.
This book stands a level above the software packages, giving the
expertise of its authors in using this whole system to its fullest. It
was written by people who have lived closest to the problems and their
solutions in software.

Magic happens under the hood, where experts have tinkered until the
GNU Autotools engine can run on everything from jet fuel to whale oil.
But there is a different kind of magic, in the cooperation and sharing
that built a widely used system over the Internet, for anyone to use
and improve. Now, as the authors share their knowledge and
experience, you are part of the community, too. Perhaps its spirit
will inspire you to make your own contributions.

David MacKenzieGermantown, MarylandJune 2000

This document was generated
by Gary V. Vaughan on February, 8 2006
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